Based on AnandTech's comprehensive benchmarks, prospective buyers should avoid the pricier $169 USD 2 GB version unless they happen to be obsessed with Skyrim.

With the high-resolution textures sucking up a lot of memory, the 2 GB card was nearly twice as fast in some SkyRim tests, but in virtually every other game it was identical in performance to the cheaper $149 USD 1 GB card. In fact, in some cases the 2 GB card performed worse than its beefier brother, actually. Of course future titles may make better use of the extra GB, but suffice it to say, you may not see (any) difference in many games.

In some games the cheaper GeForce 650 Ti was shown being outperformed by the aggressively discounted Radeon HD 7850 from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD). But in other titles, the cheaper 650 Ti holds its own.

Bear in mind too that the Radeon HD 7850 is louder, hotter, and sucks down up to 20 more watts under load. And while you can't do multi-GPU on the 650 Ti, at 5.75-inches it's inches shorter than the full-size 8.27-inch Radeon HD 7850.

But the picture is muddied by the fact that the Radeon HD 7850 comes with games, while the currently announced 650 Ti cards do not. Correction: The 650 Ti comes bundled with "Assassin's Creed III".

The size advantage is sacrificed somewhat by the fact that the 650 Ti is perhaps needlessly dual-slot.

[Image Source: Anandtech]

In short, for certain specialized form factors the GeForce 650 Ti is the clear winner, but for standard LAN party boxes and their ilk, it's a close-call between the Radeon HD 7850 and GeForce 650 Ti, with the Radeon perhaps winning on merits of leaving room for expansion (via cross-fire setups).

The only way AMD is keeping in this race is through deep discounting; the Radeon HD 7850 debuted at $250 -- a full $80 above its current price point. But that 1/3rd markdown is economic 101. AMD's early arrival has allowed it to cut prices and stay in the game, even as NVIDIA has caught up and brought to bear an impressive Kepler ensemble.

Anyone who read this article, just go to Anandtech and read the full review.For those to lazy, here are a few corrections for you.

1. Re: 1GB vs 2GB - After Ryan (anandtech) provided metrics on 1GB vs 2GB he discussed that this is not as clear cut as is seems. The oversimplification does the reader a disservice.

Start reading the paragraph following the benchmarks. It reads "But despite the open-and-shut nature of our data we’re not ready to put our weight behind these results. . ."

2. The 650Ti will bundle Assassin’s Creed III. This appears to be an NVidia (not manufacturer) bundle download code w/ the caveat that the game hasn't been released yet for PC.

2. The basic results were that the 650Ti has the poorest performance per $, and slotting between the 7770 and 7850 in price. IE: Save the cash and go with the 7770 or spend an extra $20 for a card

To Jason Mick's credit if your power constrained but still want the fastest possible card (a trade off that negates price/performance) then this is the card to get.

Its just a shame that its a full height dual slot card. In a power/space starved htpc or similar where cost is less of a concern, this would have been a fantastic option. Maybe an OEM will pull off a half height design . . . ?

As for this article

Its like every statement falls just short of accurate . . . And its not like this is an one-off issues. You guys ever consider hiring a fact checker for the site? Or maybe just automate the summaries and be done with it (a good algorithm couldn't be any worse)? I'd love to know how much traffic to this site is strictly a click-through from anandtech (which is how I usually land here)!

The GB comment is true. Anand hasn't updated for newer games so they withheld their judgement.

I don't know what you mean by worse performance per $, though. it's about 15$ more than the 7770 on newegg and appears to perform quite a bit better in everything except marginally faster speeds in crysis and a toss up in skyrim depending on resolution. For games its quite a bit better than the 7770, though the compute performance is still as poor as the other kepler cards.

When the next price drop occurs, everything will need to be re-evaluated. I'm sure AMD will follow suit and the consumers win regardless of who becomes the better deal!

I'm not an AMD fan boy. I can't tell you who will make my next card. It will depend on how much cash is in my wallet and the PSU in my system.

Its simply a question of goals. Part of my rant is that making blanket statements based in a half assed summary of someone else's review is just poor journalism at best. Misleading at worse. I read for information, facts, and well fleshed out analysis. Sometimes the cliffs notes are all I need, but not when the cliffs notes tell me that A Tale Of Two Cities was the source material for You've Got Mail. If you're going to make a claim, properly qualify it.

Re. the performance per dollar, its a matter of performance gain and cost tier.

ie: How much performance does the extra $ buy you.

Again I'll refer to the well written anandtech article (see the last page.) Excerpt below at end of this post.

My own feelings on the matter are that if I'm looking to pinch every penny, and build something to a strict budget, this is something I consider. Should I allocate more $$ for a small vid gain (ex: 10%)? Or would I benefit more by putting it towards the processor, RAM, etc . . ?Every build with a budget is a series of trade-offs. If I'm looking for best bang for the buck in the strictest sense this matters a great deal.

As for why I made the claim ...

The fact of the matter is that from a price/performance perspective the $149 GTX 650 Ti 1GB is not competitive enough with the $169 Radeon HD 7850 1GB. At its best the GTX 650 Ti can match the 7850, and at its worse it can only keep up with a 7770. The end result is that most of the time the GTX 650 Ti is going to lose to the 7850 by more than the 13% price difference between the two, which means that NVIDIA is coming up short even if they are the cheaper option. <continues>